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2016/04/11 09:47:00
Subject: Alternative Terrain: Castles for conversion.
In the good old days wargamers had to make their own terrain using all sorts of materials and craft skills. As time went by, the market grew, and plastic manufacturing became cheaper, and more and more ready made terrain has become available.
The most recent is the Warlord Games castle, which is a kit for four towers and four walls that you can build into a fairly realistic historical looking castle that could be used in a variety of periods and genres.
Although this is a good kit, to me it looks overpriced at £190 including postage, particularly as it looks too neat and regular to resemble a real castle, and I would want to adapt.
I reckon for the same money, you could buy one or two children’s toy castles and a load of materials (plasticard, hot glue, spray paint and so on) and build a much more interesting castle of your own.
For example this Playmobil Hawk Knight Castle is moulded from polystyrene, so it’s easy to cut up and rebuild with added plasticard to fill in the rear of the walls and add new details. Playmobil make three different castles which are all compatible with each other and with several extension tower and wall kits.
Has anyone done this with a toy castle set, not just Playmobil? Would you like to share some pics of your creations?
Chopping up legos I have done already, but somehow I always drawn the line about playmobil...
We have a ridiculously big amount of the old klicky style castle part...gives you an enormous potential for customization of the setup...flea markets and eBay would be "reasonable" sources to acquire these still...
Would love to see a conversion on a general basis of these...but too afraid to do that kind of surgery on my own...
MageKnight produced a castle set that you can find reasonably on eBay all the time. It's also very well done and the plastic is heavy/thick. Although you could cut it all apart I personally wouldn't. Have you considered going with hirst arts blocks?
2016/04/11 19:57:38
Subject: Re:Alternative Terrain: Castles for conversion.
I'm planning a scale model of Orford Castle, which I will do with foamcore board, cardboard and plasticard, and a plywood structure to allow it to be hinged open.
However this thread is about castle models that can be bought and adapted relatively cheaply from children's toys.
They sell plaster molds for all sorts of structures including space hulk. If you want to go back to the days of yore these are the guys to hit up. Like all things with miniatures its pricy to get into. Once you have the molds though plaster is dirt cheap! And you can make what ever you want!
To many unpainted models to count.
2016/04/12 01:51:37
Subject: Alternative Terrain: Castles for conversion.
They sell plaster molds for all sorts of structures including space hulk. If you want to go back to the days of yore these are the guys to hit up. Like all things with miniatures its pricy to get into. Once you have the molds though plaster is dirt cheap! And you can make what ever you want!
That site looks fantastic, but yeah, the molds looks expensive. I mean you can get some good GW scenery from site with discounts for less money.
2016/04/12 01:53:07
Subject: Alternative Terrain: Castles for conversion.
Hirst arts molds also come with a mega learning curve. You need a lot of things, a lot of time, and a lot of patience to use them. They're great, and I love my ones, but they're a whole new knowledge area to get into.
2016/04/12 04:47:17
Subject: Alternative Terrain: Castles for conversion.
kb_lock wrote: Hirst arts molds also come with a mega learning curve. You need a lot of things, a lot of time, and a lot of patience to use them. They're great, and I love my ones, but they're a whole new knowledge area to get into.
This but I will admit, it's slow to learn, but you quickly can pick up on it, the big things are buying the right plaster and getting bubbles lit, which you can find TONS of videos on. All you do is just put it on a table and the the table with a mallet for like ten min to shake it all up.
But the good thing is, once you have the molds you just need the plaster which is so cheap with how far it goes.
If you really wanna go old school, that's the way to do it, and it's totally customizable.
If you wanna wow anyone, even the most veteran of players and hobbyists, you come in with a custom 3d zone mortalis or space hulk board and jaws will drop.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
sk8brdr540 wrote: MageKnight produced a castle set that you can find reasonably on eBay all the time. It's also very well done and the plastic is heavy/thick. Although you could cut it all apart I personally wouldn't. Have you considered going with hirst arts blocks?
OH MAN!!! i just got up and started reading the rest of the comments, way to take me back to middle school! Mage knights were my jam! and QFT they had an awesome castle set up. I still have one of the towers.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/04/12 12:28:10
To many unpainted models to count.
2016/04/12 13:56:37
Subject: Re:Alternative Terrain: Castles for conversion.
Simba make a toy castle that you can buy for about £10-15 if you look around. Ebay usually has at least one, and Lidl shops occasionally have it around Christmas time. You can also search for Falcon Castle, excluding Playmobil from the search (they also make a "Falcon Castle").
It's huge - about 2ft square. it comes with tons of towers and wall sections, and a pretty decent keep. There's a variant with round towers, and they also make a Dragon Castle IIRC. It's been a source of gamer conversions for years, and a search around the web will reveal plenty of excellent mods.
It does have drawbacks though - the towers have very little space for figures to stand. The walls are single-piece moulds, and would need an internal side to look decent (buy a second set and start chopping?). There are some quick wins - the keep needs very little work, but if you want it to look really good, you're going to have to put a lot of work in.
I think my conclusion was "too much work for me and nowhere to store it" and I sold mine
2016/04/12 14:00:52
Subject: Re:Alternative Terrain: Castles for conversion.
There's also this cheeky little blighter from Usborne Books - a slot-together foamboard castle in a box! RRP is £25, seen it as cheap as £10 by searching around. It's surprisingly large and solid.
Not inspiring on its own, perhaps, but you could paint it yourself, or use it as the basic framework for a plasticard shell. Perhaps coat the walls with Polyfilla or spackle and scribe them.
Come to think of it, it comes with dozens of "flat" figures in two forces, red and blue - one stop short of "my first wargame" for younger kids
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2016/04/12 14:19:09
2016/04/14 02:39:45
Subject: Alternative Terrain: Castles for conversion.
They sell plaster molds for all sorts of structures including space hulk. If you want to go back to the days of yore these are the guys to hit up. Like all things with miniatures its pricy to get into. Once you have the molds though plaster is dirt cheap! And you can make what ever you want!
That site looks fantastic, but yeah, the molds looks expensive. I mean you can get some good GW scenery from site with discounts for less money.
true, and as kb_lock mentions there is a learning curve (which can be frustrating at first) but GW won't let you cast and cast and cast their stuff Basically if you plan on serious terrain/building stuff Hirst arts is really a good way to go imo. Now, that being said, you really only "need" maybe 4 molds total to do a LOT of stuff.
I have two of them Fieldstone #70 and Trench plank #222 - I can make pretty much a ton of ruins and houses and stuff for flooring and bases with just those two. (I don't do a roof with bricks tho). The molds are very good quality, especially compared to say Woodland scenics rock molds for instance. There are also plenty of plans that'll show you how to make various things, with what molds etc.
A couple of cons - terrain pieces made from them can get a bit heavy. Not terribly so, but they're not foamboard and pink insulation foam. They're more durable but they can and do shatter if dropped =/ And of course the learning how to cast and needing to cast thing is pretty time intensive.
Anyway, it's something to definitely keep in mind
And on a slightly different tangent - Michael's and other craft stores for instance sell birdhouses and such. I just bought a small 'tower' for terrain tonight while I was there. You might check out something like that as well. Buy 4 connect with other foamboard/ craft wood. Something like that.
It was a softer plastic so it was harder to make paint stick, but the overall effect was pretty good. I just added a base, textured a few bare sides with vinyl cobblestone and glued on a few doors.
Here it is being used as town walls.
I later sold it when the club bought heavily into the Mage Knight castle when it was being closed out. Was a fun project, but if I did it again, Id probably use someting made of harder plastic like the Simba castle.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/04/15 18:42:13
The Simba castle is really cheap and has a good look to it. The walls are thin shell plastic and the arrow slits are a bit large and badly positioned, but these points are easily fixed with foamcore board and plasticard. If I was using the Simba castle I would add one or two round towers and make a new keep or adapt the one provided.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/04/15 19:21:52
Not just castles if you look about either
Made for a fish tank and perfect as is.
"But me no buts! Our comrades get hurt. Our friends die. Falkenburg is a knight who swore an oath to serve the church and to defend the weak. He'd be the first to tell you to stop puling and start planning. Because what we are doing-at risk to ourselves-is what we have sworn to do. The West relies on us. It is a risk we take with pride. It is an oath we honour. Even when some soft southern burgher mutters about us, we know the reason he sleeps soft and comfortable, why his wife is able to complain about the price of cabbages as her most serious problem and why his children dare to throw dung and yell "Knot" when we pass. It's because we are what we are. For all our faults we stand for law and light.
Von Gherens This Rough Magic Lackey, Flint & Freer
Mekagorkalicious -Monkeytroll
2017 Model Count-71
2016/04/15 19:45:02
Subject: Alternative Terrain: Castles for conversion.
The Simba castle is really cheap and has a good look to it. The walls are thin shell plastic and the arrow slits are a bit large and badly positioned, but these points are easily fixed with foamcore board and plasticard. If I was using the Simba castle I would add one or two round towers and make a new keep or adapt the one provided.
Here's a guy doing amazing stuff with the Simba parts. I don't know if he ever finished it.
Since we have the Mage Knight walls, The keep structure is actually the building I'm most interested in, though as a town building with accessible interior rather than as a keep. I wonder if just sticking wall sections together (back to back) could make the walls better looking better walls. Looks like the castle comes with 8 towers, so sticking them together in two's to make wider rectangular towers would be good.
Simba alsoused to offer a Playmobile-clone castle (as in pirated-copy accurate) that looked great and didn't seem to have any of the hollow-side issues, but I haven't seen it offered for sale in at least 5 years.
The Mage Knight castle is unfortunately OOP. It's still possible to find the gatehouse and walls with doors for reasonable cost, but the plain walls without doors fetch a good amount.They do have a fantasy look, but they're really sturdy, hard wearing, have a farily good amount of space on the battlements, all the doors will handily fit even large 28mm figs and they are modular so they can be rearranged as necessary. They're also nicely detailed and prepainted!
Here's a picture of ours, using only a fraction of the parts we've purchased.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/04/15 22:11:11
A castle or town wall usually has a parapet on the outside, with crenelations to allow people to shoot from cover. There is a wall walk so people can move around on top of the wall.
It's extremely rare for there to be another parapet on the inside of the wall walk, because if the enemy gain the wall walk, you need to be able to shoot at them from inside the castle. Some castles have wall towers with no inside wall to allow defenders in the keep to shoot into the towers.
Therefore, I would not stick two sections of Simba wall back to back. I would do what the guy has done in the pictures where he has added white plasticard to create a wall walk. This can easily be covered with embossed plasticard in dressed stone pattern.
If you want to be really authentic, the walls usually had a wooden structure on top, to protect the defenders from the weather and overhead shots, and sometimes to allow them to shoot vertically down at the base of the walls. Naturally these have not survived for hundreds of years, but some castles like the Tower of London, have rebuilt sections to show you what they are like.
Kilkrazy wrote: A castle or town wall usually has a parapet on the outside, with crenelations to allow people to shoot from cover. There is a wall walk so people can move around on top of the wall.
It's extremely rare for there to be another parapet on the inside of the wall walk, because if the enemy gain the wall walk, you need to be able to shoot at them from inside the castle. Some castles have wall towers with no inside wall to allow defenders in the keep to shoot into the towers.
Therefore, I would not stick two sections of Simba wall back to back. I would do what the guy has done in the pictures where he has added white plasticard to create a wall walk. This can easily be covered with embossed plasticard in dressed stone pattern.
That makes some sense. I think maybe you could separate the parapet of the second wall and glue it to the back of the first and then glue the bottom of the second wall joined to that so you get the covered back of the parapet wall and the wider area to stand.
As for overall realism I'm not overly fussed. I like the look of the masonry fronts even if there were usually wooden structures on top and often overhanging
Kilkrazy wrote: In the good old days wargamers had to make their own terrain using all sorts of materials and craft skills.
Has anyone done this with a toy castle set, not just Playmobil? Would you like to share some pics of your creations?
This plastic castles have limitation, how can your castle looklike. Good for human race, bad if you have orcs, ogres, elfs, dwarfs, etc...
For me old days don't ends with this nowadays plastic stuff.
I need castle for dwarf race.
Is fully build from highdensity foam and some details from modelrailroads shop.
Spoiler:
Plastic castles are good, If you need save time for building. But on other side it cost you unique visage.
About price, for scratch build castle is material cheaper, but if you count time for constructing, is a lot more expensive.
2016/04/17 09:56:30
Subject: Alternative Terrain: Castles for conversion.
Well that is downright impressive!
I haven't got the patience for something so grand. I usually achieve some measure of uniqueness by finding toys for terrain that no one else has used or by combining them in different ways. Of course the results aren't nearly as unique as what you've come up with.
Momotaro wrote: Simba make a toy castle that you can buy for about £10-15 if you look around. Ebay usually has at least one, and Lidl shops occasionally have it around Christmas time. You can also search for Falcon Castle, excluding Playmobil from the search (they also make a "Falcon Castle").
It's huge - about 2ft square. it comes with tons of towers and wall sections, and a pretty decent keep. There's a variant with round towers, and they also make a Dragon Castle IIRC. It's been a source of gamer conversions for years, and a search around the web will reveal plenty of excellent mods.
It does have drawbacks though - the towers have very little space for figures to stand. The walls are single-piece moulds, and would need an internal side to look decent (buy a second set and start chopping?). There are some quick wins - the keep needs very little work, but if you want it to look really good, you're going to have to put a lot of work in.
I think my conclusion was "too much work for me and nowhere to store it" and I sold mine
Ha, my little brother had one of those. I "borrowed" it
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/04/17 23:34:48
Basically if you plan on serious terrain/building stuff Hirst arts is really a good way to go 
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